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Monday, May 21, 2012

Waylon and Willie and the Girls

What should you do if you wake up on a Saturday morning of an overly
busy weekend and have a ton to do? Work to prepare for the rest of
weekend, lots of graduation parties to get ready for (gifts, cards, wrapping), laundry, emails, copies to make, set up to do for programs on Sunday...

You responsible people out there are saying, "Well, Katie, you wake up and get out of bed and do those things that you need to do, of course."

But what if you get up and the sky looks like this?

And the temperature is toasty warm and the sun is shining and the wind is blowing?

What do you do then?

My weekend house guest and I woke up Saturday facing the list of work mentioned first above. Work, work work.

Instead, we played hookey.

We called up our local friend and asked to borrow his jeep. He said yup, no questions asked.

So we drove out to his farm, backed it out of the barn, rolled down the windows, and took off.

No road trip is complete without tunes. We couldn't just listen to the radio- we had to embrace the ambiance of the jeep. The ambiance includes cassette tapes of Waylon Jennings and the Bellamy Brothers. (There was also a deck of playing cards, which I would think would be difficult to use in a windy jeep.)

So, close your eyes, feel the wind in your hair, and listen to the soundtrack of our road trip:

Just Waylon and Willie...and the girls. On our way to exciting locations, like Luckenbach, Texas or Buda, Illinois.

Anita was the expert driver. Next roadtrip (this is an annual occurrence, btw.), I am bringing gold stars to stick on the dash every time she successfully shifts the tricky transmission. On this day, she only got invisible ones.

Therefore, I got to sit in the passenger seat, hand flying in the wind, hair whipping around my head, sun on my face, singing along with tunes back from when country music was really country music.

FYI, people who really know me: If I am ever frustrated, angry, bored, sad, or even just content, stick me in a car on a nice day with the windows down and music blasting. Sweet relaxation seeps into my bones, and I am happy. Bonus points if I don't have to drive :)

So, we left with no agenda, except that we needed to be back soon (we had work to do, you know), and at some point, ice cream sounded good.

We headed west- which seems like a good country-girls-listening-to-Waylon direction to go. All I know is that we were getting out of Oh-Henry for a while.

One interesting site was some of the windmills being worked on. Can you see that blade on the ground?

This one has a little better perspective. Do you see that "large" pick up truck next to the blade. These things are awesome. If there are windmills in your area, I highly recommend going for a drive to see them up close.

We drove down roads we had never been before, got "lost" and tried to guess what towns we were coming into before reading the water tower, saw what looked like a serious biker funeral, listened to each cassette at least twice all the way through, and eventually got some delicious ice cream.

And, unfortunately, we had to head home. Responsibility beckoned, and a gas tank will only get you so far. We were gone...for four hours. Things were a little hectic that night, but it was oh-so worth it. Sometimes, it is good to push aside the to-do list, and do something out of the ordinary. And if you have a choice, you should do it in a jeep.

Update: You can read the report of the other half of the road trip duo here.

"Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece." -Saint John Paul the Great

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